... and today we awakened to an inch of new snow. Good news: it's rained enough today that, as of now, I'm looking at the same few stubborn patches of snow as this time yesterday, so we haven't lost much ground, so to speak. Jo-Anne has been a busy girl lately. I'm splitting my time between the house and office here in the workshop (yes, on a good day it's called the workshop; on bad days, it's demoted to 'garage'). As Jo-Anne Stoltz, PhD, Adjunct Professor Extraordinaire, I'm marking counselling masters' students' final project papers, shepherding them to the finish line in their internships, and prepping for summer teaching. Then I swap mask and cape and head over to the house, where I am Jo, lowly painting apprentice. One more day and all the walls in the house will have fresh faces. Let me show you some pics:
This is one of the spare rooms, and is a lovely shade of grey-mauve called Porcelain. Contractor Jim accidently referred to it as 'the pink room', but quickly realized his error under my withering gaze. One of the carpenters gently corrected him, saying 'I think it's mauve, Jim.' There are no pink rooms in the house.
The yellow room is a lovely shade of Buttermilk. And my favourite of the bedroom colours, below, is a silvery grey called Whitestone. 
I liked it so much, I've gone with it in the smallest spare room and the master bedroom and adjoining bath. I think it will look amazing with the fir trim.In and around these roles, I've also sewed the top for this years' quilt, to be auctioned at the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association's national conference. The conference is in Calgary in May, and the Social Justice chapter will auction my quilt along with other items, with proceeds to the Calgary Homeless Foundation. I'll post a pic of the quilt once I've quilted it. But in order to do that, I have to juggle space here in the... garage (it's been a long day), as my former sewing space has been taken over by seedling trays. Yes, I've gone from sewing to sowing. Behold:
I've sown herbs like lemon balm and thyme shown here, as well as arugula, basil, leeks, four varieties of tomatoes, and three of peppers. All are organic, most are heritage varieties from Seeds of Victoria and The Cottage Gardener, and all have germinated very well. 
So well, in fact, that when it came to onions, I decided to save seeds by allocating only one to each space in the seedling tray. Something about it bothered me, though, so (well after they'd sprouted) I watched a YouTube video on planting onion seed-- where the very capable looking, articulate man from a leading American university was packing a 4-inch pot with one hundred seeds. Oops. Apparently, when they're ready to transplant out you grab them by their long, green locks, pull them out of the pot and gently tease apart the one hundred tiny sets and plant those in the garden. Sigh. Ah well, I may have one hundred lonely, isolated onion sprouts shedding onion tears for the company of their siblings, but they will be tasty, unhappy onions by gum. 
